


this is the end product (of the absolute violence in your soul, and the grassroots fires i will sow)

by kuro49



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Consensual Underage Sex, M/M, Murder, hot dad week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 08:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2422700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he pours gasoline across the linoleum, he spills the same amount in alcohol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the end product (of the absolute violence in your soul, and the grassroots fires i will sow)

**Author's Note:**

> Or the teenage!Hot dads au written for the second annual hot dad week (Oct 4-10!) hosted by [hotdadsinajaeger](http://hotdadsinajaeger.tumblr.com/), in which Stacker is a bit of a delinquent, trouble always seems to find Herc, and Obadel Pentecost still dies in the same manner as the novelization. (cross posted to my [tumblr](http://setsailslash.tumblr.com/post/99464773446/this-is-the-end-product))

There is fire in his eyes, there is the sun behind his head.

And it always burns red, no matter night or day.

 

Donovan and Tess Hansen are new in town, moved in with their two boys into a small house just on the outskirts of town. A bad part of town, but they don’t know that. It’s a tight fit for two, let alone four. Still, it fits even when their boys haven’t quite fit in with their red hair and an Australian lilt to all of their words.

Hercules has just turned fifteen, and there’s nothing he loves here.

But that matters very little when his father is working nights at his new position, his mother spread thin between his brother and two part time jobs.

He meets him on a late night run for milk in a strange town he has only been in for barely a week. Not that he knows it at the moment, not when he is standing across the street, a carton of milk in a white plastic bag hanging from two fingers.

He doesn’t know, not in that moment, just how much trouble that boy is.

Not even when he stands there watching him in motion, not flinching away as the first fist thrown finally connects with flesh. He doesn’t know his name. Hell, Hercules Hansen can barely make out a face in the shadows overthrown against the sidewalk.

 

"Last chance."

Herc just looks at him, raising an eyebrow as he holds up the car keys.

"Your choice, Stacker."

 

Being so tall for his age, Stacker plays bouncer for the nights when they are short staffed, the lines are long and the club is packed full. Usually being tasked with dragging the men who can barely stand on their own, let alone understand how to keep their hands to themselves, out and keeping them at bay.

There are no good men in this town, and being born and raised, here and knowing he ain’t about to go anywhere, Stacker accepts that.

This is also the moment he meets him.

Not that he knows it at the time.

He doesn’t know his name, and he can just make out a silhouette against the bright fluorescent white of the convenience store behind him. Stacker Pentecost hasn’t given him a second glance until the drunken wreck of a man is finally down on the ground.

 

It isn’t until the next day that the seat sitting empty next to Hercules for a good four days since the start of the new school year is finally filled. And it is only when Herc sees those torn, bruised knuckles that might have been bloody last night that he puts it altogether.

(Like that puzzle set he promised Angie they will finish come holidays, like that same set she had thrown to the ground when he tells her he will be gone by the end of the week. The night before he leaves, she gives him her first kiss at the end of his driveway where there are dark marks beneath the sole of her shoes.)

It also isn’t until after lunch that Stacker finds a band-aid on his desk.

"For your hands," he tells him.

These are the first words said.

 

Every past has a beginning.

Every fire has a lit match.

And when he pours gasoline across the linoleum, he spills the same amount in alcohol.

 

"For your hands," he tells him, and he might not be smiling with his mouth but there is something akin to respect in his eyes. Stacker can only wonder why, an act of kindness is not a thing he is accustomed to. "It was quite the punch."

Stacker figures he can afford to do the same.

"I can teach you, if you’d like."

This is their first conversation.

 

It is mutual agreement that they become friends, a silent pact between them with Stacker knowing just how this town takes to outsiders, one only made solid when Herc notices how the rest of their classmates steer clear of Stacker and the Pentecost ties.

He never does ask him why, he doesn’t have to.

He can hear the whispers made behind their backs just as well, of an Obadel Pentecost that works in the backrooms of the club.

 

Stacker is still fifteen when Hercules turns sixteen, and in five months they will be on equal footing once more. But right now, Stacker takes him to the club, and the club’s an old one, history in the brick and mortar holding it in place.

Fights are nothing new.

But this one is when he sees him in motion, throwing that punch just as he’s taught him with perfect form. (The first time someone swings at him because of Stacker Pentecost, they are surprised to find that Hercules Hansen knows how to throw a mean one too, not knowing he learned from the best.)

They get an earful from the owner for the trouble but they hardly hear a thing.

It is not inevitability when it leads to this.

Stacker has always known that girls don’t interest him in the ways that boys do. When he kisses him, there’s nothing soft to it, hard planes and harder wills that slot together. He doesn’t expect a thing of Herc, maybe that he will pull away with that apologetic smile his mouth does so well, curving and twisting and fitting all wrong, and they can still go back to the way they were.

He kisses him and it’s nothing soft, and when Herc shoves a thigh between his, it’s all Stacker can do to keep from sinking completely into the heat.

 

They are sitting on the grass behind the bleachers.

Herc still in his gym clothes, loose shorts that ride up when he leans over to rummage through the bag he has dumped on the ground next to them. There is the distant sound of the track team, steady footsteps, drifting closer then further as they run their circles around the field.

Herc takes his hand, the other opening the bottle of hydrogen peroxide sitting on the grass. He is unceremonious when he pours it over the torn skin of Stacker’s hand without warning, even when Stacker can see it a mile away.

"Serves you right," he mutters as Stacker hisses at the burn of the alcohol across his open wounds.

"You’re just jealous ‘cause I look so good with scars."

Herc snorts, and isn’t any gentler when he presses a fresh band-aid over the clean wounds from another fistfight Stacker has the tendency to get mixed up in. “Mate, then you haven’t seen mine.”

"Well, _then_ ,” Stacker grins, taking his hand back but only taking it so far as to give a pat to Herc’s knee, leaving it there as he continues, “You ought to show me some time.”

Herc doesn’t say anything, just smiles that smile done with his eyes and leans back to lie down on the grass, stretching out his legs so Stacker’s hand rests against his thigh instead.

 

The next day, Stacker doesn’t come to class.

Herc doesn’t think much of it.

 

He is outside, breathing in the night air. Breathing in the fire, the ashes, and the smoke rising further into the sky in fumes. This is his doing, and that unknots something twisted inside of him.

"Be good for mum and dad, Scotty."

He says when the line connects on the second ring, knowing full well that the old man won’t be home until morning, and their mother’s shift doesn’t end for at least another hour.

"Make sure the fire doesn’t go out for days."

The last thing Scott hears before he disconnects is his brother’s soft laugh at that, it’s a good goodbye.

 

Herc has his bag slung over one shoulder, standing just a step behind him as he unlocks the door to the house. And Stacker really wishes he has remembered to warn his friend.

Herc is still taking off his shoes when Luna walks out into the narrow hallway from the kitchen, a hastily made sandwich in one hand, halfway to her mouth when she stops, her eyes wide.

"I’ve got to tell Tam," she whispers and runs out the backdoor before Stacker can even introduce her.

"Sibling?" Herc offers, standing up beside him.

"Sibling," Stacker replies with an apologetic smile before he is leading him up the stairs.

Not even twenty minutes later when the two of them have settled comfortably on the floor of Stacker’s room does Tamsin come crashing in without warning. Herc is leaning back against the side of his bed, their English Lit. assignment propped open atop his knees.

"Luna told me you brought a man home."

Stacker lets out a low frustrated noise from the back of his throat, and Herc doesn’t know what else to do but stare at the wild red hair and her green, green eyes trained right at him with all the fascination he has ever been faced with.

“Get out, Tam.”

"Oh, hell no." And then she walks the short distance to Stacker’s bed and drops down on it like she has done this a million times. (The fact is, that number might not be an exaggeration.) Her hair spreads across the pillow, red against the muted print, her head tilting as she looks at him like she is trying to figure out a thing or two about her friend’s new friend. "I’m Tamsin, watched Stacker grow from a wee boy to that fine young man right there."

"You are only two years older than me."

"That is still two years I will always have on you."

"…Y’know, mate, she’s right." Herc tells him, not even trying to hide the grin looking more and more like the one splitting across Tamsin’s face. Stacker doesn’t know whether he should be glad, to see the two of them already looking like they are fast friends.

"We’ve got to keep him, Stacks."

He figures it can’t be so bad, and then he hears Luna’s laugh from across the hall.

 

Obadel Pentecost’s funeral is a small affair.

And this is the next time he sees Stacker again, almost a week since. Herc walks up, stands behind Stacker in the thin crowd, more family than friends, and watches as his palms curl into fists that clench and clench and clench until Herc is surprised there isn’t blood dripping from his hands.

His mother has left for her shift, Scott has fucked off somewhere on the grounds, and Herc is left alone. It is an hour after the service has already end. He sees Luna in her black dress and Tamsin holding her hand as she cries into her shoulder.

Herc doesn’t know Stacker’s father, not in the way that has Tamsin’s eyes going glassy. And Herc figures he might not have been a good man through and through but he was a good father, and really, that’s all that matters.

 

Stacker will not be the one to ask this of him. That, Herc knows.

"You have a choice."

"Yeah, Stacks, we can either sit here and wait for the cops to show, or I do something _really_ stupid.”

This is him lighting the metaphorical match to a fire that will burn, and burn.

 

He’s been seeing red for a long, long time.

Ever since he’s learned to swing, ever since he’s learned that his threshold for pain can be pushed. And Stacker remembers his father teaching him this, there are no good men in this town. Everything else he learns on his own, and he learns that there is a fundamental difference between men that aren’t good and a bad, _bad_ man.

The knife goes in easy.

 

_For my family._

 

His hands are bigger when he holds his against the sheets, braces him into the mattress. His muted sheets looking black in the dark with Herc lying beneath him with his t-shirt still on even though his pants are already pushed off of his hips.

Herc shares a room with his brother, bunk beds in a narrow room, so they never get to do this at his place. Stacker doesn’t admit it but he likes that his sheets smell of Herc even after he leaves, out the window, where he snuck in.

Looking down at him, button undone, the line of his cock pressed against the zipper, tenting the fabric and looking darker at the head with how wet he’s gotten him, Stacker leans down to take another kiss.

He doesn’t make any noise even though he knows Luna sleeps like the dead and his parents’ room is too far down the hall to hear a thing. He just doesn’t swallow down any noise that escapes from Herc.

Letting it fill the room.

 

Herc finds Scott at the edge of the cemetery grounds, by the soft sloping hills that look over another burial service happening. And there is a light in his brother’s eyes that he can’t quite place.

It reminds him a lot of when they are back home (first Brisbane, then Sydney) and Scotty is crouched with the sun overhead, magnifying glass in hand, dark marks in the crevices between the bricks of their driveway. What Herc doesn’t see is the lighter in his brother’s back pocket, for when the magnifying glass doesn’t do the trick.

He takes him home.

Coming down the stairs, having just gotten out of the black suit, something borrowed from the back of their old man’s closet, Scott is sitting there on the kitchen counter.

He asks him whether he is content with just this.

"He wasn’t heading home when we were leaving."

Herc stubbornly doesn’t reply, turns to open the fridge instead, and Scott continues.

"You think Stacker knows what he is doing."

Herc closes the fridge door, and the fact that the milk is all done doesn’t escape him.

"Did you finish it all?"

For once, Scott isn’t lying through his teeth when he finishes the last few drops from his glass and puts it into the sink. For once, Scott isn’t looking like he has a single bad bone in his body, and then he is reaching out to drop his prized lighter into his brother’s hand.

"Keep this, Herc."

Scott doesn’t tell him what he should do with it, he doesn’t need to.

 

"Don’t do anything stupid, Stacks."

What should have been a warning comes out as a plead. The soft, wet earth beneath his shoes sink a little when he rests his weight on the balls of his feet, watches Stacker standing by the tombstone of his father’s grave without an expression on his face.

Stacker turns to Herc and the thin grimace of a smile that finally shows only promises red.

"When do I ever?"

 

He knocks on their door even though he knows where they keep the spare key. He knocks on their door even though he can count on one hand all the other ways of getting inside their house without one.

The door opens, and it is Viviane who is smiling even when the skin around her eyes is sunken, even when there is still a ball of tissue crumpled in her fist.

"Mrs. Pentecost."

"Come on in, Herc. They are just upstairs." She tells him, and he opens his mouth, snapping it shut just as quick. Condolences are for the ones who have lost someone, Obadel Pentecost is not lost, he was _taken_.

He is standing at the foot of the narrow staircase leading up when he turns around. He still doesn’t know what to say to the sight of her silhouette disappearing into the living room, and he thinks he isn’t ever going to.

So he heads up the stairs instead.

 

When he opens the door to the room, it is Luna, sitting at her brother’s desk, still in the black dress, telling him that Stacker hasn’t come back. When he opens the door, Tamsin doesn’t need to say the words to confirm what he already knows.

That Stacker’s got a plan.

 

"I’ve got to go buy milk," he tells them.

 

Standing there beside the other, being five months older but an inch shorter with glass crunching beneath the soles of his boots, Herc upends the last bottle in his hand and drops that too. This is not really him giving an answer, this is him making a decision all on his own when he walks into the club and there is the owner lying slumped at Stacker’s feet.

This is their doing, a legacy that will spread like poison in the whispers, of two senior in their last year, four months short of graduation, disappearing on the night a club on the bad side of town burns completely down to its foundation.

Hard to forget, given that the fire burns for days after.

Given that the owner is never found.

Just scorches left behind, black marks that can only be seen on the ground in the midday sun.

 

The dirt and sand rising in a cloud behind them give way to the open road.

The stale heat escapes from where the windows are rolled all the way down, the sky dark, their headlights burning a path on the highway heading south. The two of them going further still, dreaming that somewhere along the way, stopping is only for when their tires have worn to the rims.

"I can take over," Stacker says, riding shotgun with his bare feet kicked up on the dash, a bottle of water in one hand, cap in the other as he passes it over, "If you’d like."

He is not shy when he watches Herc drink, watches him as he swallows deeply, Adam’s apple bobbing when he answers with a minute shake of his head.

"A few more miles maybe, it reminds me of Oz." He tells him, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth when he adds, "I like it."

It sounds a lot like _I like you_.

"I think you might like it there too."

Hercules is seventeen with his foot to the pedal, hitting one hundred, then steadily climbing to one twenty, Stacker sixteen, when they get out for good from this godforsaken place.

 

XXX Kuro


End file.
